How Do I Look?

We live in the age of the retouchable selfie. For those navigating the world of social media, the issue of how one presents oneself to the world has never been more critical. Psychological studies have shown the high impact of this selfie culture on the mental health of young people especially.

How might the long tradition of the Christian gaze, found in scripture, art, theology and philosophy speak into this selfie generation? What, in this context, might be the significance of the doctrine of humankind's creation in God's image, or of the incarnation? On a more practical level, how might the monastic tradition of the 'chaste gaze' challenge or reinforce the selfie-culture?

Putting such theological and ethical questions into dialogue with psychological studies and philosophical understandings, the book offers an important pastoral and scholarly resource for anyone seeking to understand theologically one of the most profound developments of the digital age.
How might the long tradition of the Christian gaze, found in scripture, art, theology and philosophy speak into this selfie generation? How Do I Look? offers an important pastoral and scholarly resource for anyone seeking to understand theologically one of the most profound developments of the digital age.

Dominic White is a scholar, pastor and artist, and a friar of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans). He is the author of The Lost Knowledge of Christ: Contemporary Spiritualities, Christian Cosmology and the Arts (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2015).

Confronting both the permanent spectacle of our times and the temporary need for the mask, Dominic White argues that we need to recover our sense of the iconic and the theophanic. He offers not sterile critique of our modern obsession with appearance and display, but a serious consideration of how this might be transfigured.

--Catherine Pickstock